Epilogue.

The first few months were the hardest for Aris. Each breath he took burned his lungs with need and sorrow. The absence of Corrine filled his world with a wrongness worse than any he had ever known. He couldn’t count the number of nights he’d woke up, covered in a sheen of sweat screaming at the memory of Wallace’s knife piercing through his wife’s neck.

He felt hollowed out. It was a struggle just getting out of bed. Every smile felt like a lie.

Still he plodded forward.

His family needed him. The twins cries at the news of the loss of their mother had ripped Aris’ soul from his chest. Their wails had voiced the feeling of absolute loss that he had felt but left unsung until then.

They had cried for hours that first day. They cried so long that their eyes burned and their faces ached from the contorted sorrow. Aris hadn’t even known that was possible. He had been gutted at the loss of his brother, but this was different. Losing Corrine was losing a part of his very soul.

The twins had nightmares every night for the first three months. They had nightmares of the Inquisitors. Nightmares of the fires that had consumed so much of their hometown. Nightmares of losing their father like they had lost their mother. Aris was in a constant stupor of exhaustion.

Aris spent countless nights laying on the floor of their room, his presence reassuring the children that he would always be there. He wouldn’t abandon them.

He wouldn’t abandon them. He swore it.

Despite his grief, Aris' presence was demanded among the budding government. Lang Valan’s son had miraculously escaped the hand of the Inquisitors and though Aris had been championed by the populace as the best choice to replace Evrain as Emperor, he had denied every attempt to make him the leader of the nation. He just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t handle leading a country when he was adjusting to leading a life of his own, taking care of his children on his own. Alone. So when Aris had heard of Lang Valan’s son’s survival, he interviewed him. He was every bit the man his father had been and more.

Cam Valan was the noblest of men that Aris had ever met. They hit it off quickly, and found solace and friendship through their commiserations of loss. They both knew pain that sadly far too many in their country now felt.

Aris knew that the government would be in good hands when he suggested him to the counsel that he had helped form after his wife’s noble sacrifice.

They warmed to the young man near as quickly as he had.

It took longer for Kestrel to believe in Cam Valan. He distrusted him and had spent many a day arguing with Aris over his foolish sudden friendship with the young man. Kestrel had become more protective than ever having Cillia restored to his side and he wasn’t about to let anything threaten his young ward.

Kestrel despite the suffering surrounding him, grew into the softness that Aris had seen lurking beneath the surface of his stony exterior when they had first met. The harshness that underlaid everything that the young man did, the harshness that had held Aris back from giving his blessing to the blossoming romance between the former street rat and his daughter Sephira, began to melt.

It was only after Kestrel befriended Lang Valan’s son, that the rest of his icy exterior melted away, returning the gentle, but strong man that Cillia had known as her protector to her and showing that gentle but unyielding strength that had came as a surprise to even Kestrel himself. It was only then that Aris’ own reservations began to melt.

With every passing day that Kestrel softened, pieces of Cillia, who had been a shell of her former self, began to regrow. She found her solace in the strong arms of her protector and found sisters in the twins.

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Seasons passed.

Vealand rebuilt.

Falling in line with the great mystery of time, despite each hour without Corrine seeming eons, time passed quickly, and, in what seemed the revolution of just one day, a year without her had passed, and with it, so did the first celebration of Corrine’s Day. The day that the public had decided to celebrate the woman who had saved them from the certain destruction that was to come under Evrain’s hands.

Tears had streamed from his eyes when he heard the merriment and the songs written for his fallen wife being rehearsed, but Aris had stayed home that day. It would be nearly five years before he could stomach the thought of a day celebrating her death, despite the pride that swelled in his heart at the celebration of her braveness.

She deserved this, and he hated that he hated it.

Still, time marched forward.

In a surprise to everyone but Aris, Kestrel was soon chosen to lead the newly minted Imperial guards in a charge to protect Cam Valan, the new emperor, and had, with reluctance to leave Aris alone, had taken the offer and moved away to start his own life with Cillia by his side as a daughter.

It was another summer until the romance that had been building between him and Sephira blossomed and, upon finally completing his self imposed meager estate, which he insisted be built on the remains of what had once been Wallace’s house before the fires had consumed it, he came to Aris to ask him for the hand of his daughter in marriage.

A joy in love that Aris hadn’t thought possible until that moment erupted in him. He hadn’t known exactly when he’d started considering Kestrel as a son, but to truly welcome him into the family swelled his heart with pride.

Here, the man that had once been a surly street rat, screaming at a world and despondent about his place in life, had grown into a fine man.

He had grown into a man that bettered those around him. He had gone from a street child, abandoned by a whoring mother desperate for her next dose of sap, to a man who owned his own estate, to a man who was in charge of guarding the new emperor. To a man to whom Aris was the first he revealed the information that he had been offered, along with his position as the head of the guards of the Emperor, the new Imperial Master of Memory Magic.

Kestrel told the new emperor he would only take the position if Sephira was by his side, and she’d only be by his side of Aris gave him his blessing to take her hand in marriage.

He didn’t hesitate a second saying yes.

He had seen the love in Sephira’s eyes whenever Kestrel dropped by for a visit or his name came up. They sprinkled the same way her mother, Corrine’s had when her gaze had fallen upon him.

She loved Kestrel more than anything in the world.

Of course he would let her marry him.

“Yes,” was all he said.

Kestrel’s smile broke wider than Aris had ever seen or thought possible for the young man.

*****

At the news of the wedding Vealand went into a frenzy. Every paper reporter begged for the exclusive story of the star-crossed duo and countless tales were wove of the two. The public demanded a large wedding.

Kestrel and Sephira chaffed at the image of them put out to the public who wrote trashy penny novels of the young couple, who’s tides had been pulled together in a tragic, but heroic tale. One, the daughter of a slain revolutionary who help slay the emperor who had entranced them all, and the other a whelp who had come from nothing to raise to a beacon of the new Veaish Empire.

Kestrel hated the attention. He always insisted that they weren’t heroes. They were only people desperate for a family. People who would stop at nothing to protect those that they loved the dearest.

Despite everything, the wedding was a small and intimate affair. Sephira’s younger twin sisters, who were now blossoming into beautiful young women, stood at her side, bedecked in floral patterns that made them look like radiant gardens, serving only to brighten Sephira’s own resplendence, in her turquoise wedding gown and strings of pearls and mountain silver.

Aris’ heart swelled at the sight of them, his three daughters. There was a part of him that still hurt at the thought of spending each day without Corrine there by his side, but it was days like this, where Sephira stood by the side of the man she loved, flanked by Kestrel’s ward Cillia, who’s bright, bubbly nature had returned, and the twins by her side, that let Aris know that despite the hardships, everything would be okay.

“I wish you were here,” he whispered into the air as he watched the young couple seal their wedding vows with a kiss. “You’d be so proud of them.”

And, in the echoes of her memories, he knew that she could never be more proud of them. Proud of him. Proud of all of them.

“I love you,” his voice was barely a sigh as he wiped a tear from his eye, celebrating the love of his eldest as she swore herself to the man who now owned her heart as completely as Corrine had held his own heart.

The End.